After their partner swap experiment takes a turn, four friends arrive at a remote beach hut to face the fallout and purge themselves of deeper truths.
Hamburg, Germany, summer 1988. A young bank employee embezzles a large amount of money using an ingenious technique and flees to Australia, from where he phones his girlfriend to tell her what he has done so easily; but her reaction is not what he naively expected.
The ambitious scientist Franz Walter doesn't hesitate when he is promised a professorship at the university. He immediately accepts, pledges absolute loyalty to the system and agrees to work for the GDR's foreign intelligence service until he can take up his new position. Together with his colleague Dirk, he is sent on foreign assignments to West Germany. Franz soon has to use blackmail to get innocent people to talk. But his superiors go even further: GDR refugees and their relatives are targeted to be psychologically destroyed, forged letters, medical diagnoses, surveillance and wiretapping are on the agenda. However, this is more than Franz can bear: he feels powerless and increasingly isolates himself. When he then decides to steal secret documents for a later defection to the West, this results in an unfortunate chain reaction leading to his arrest and ultimately to his execution...
Retirees Karin, Gerhard and Philippa are not in the mood for Nordic walking and seniors' courses at the university. When Philippa, who is living life to the full as Leonie's godmother, helps the two to unexpected grandparenthood, they suddenly have two "lively" god-grandchildren to look after, a huge bouncy castle standing in the garden and Lego bricks stuck to their feet.